The Darkside
by biggielittles86
Summary: This is a story about what the Mario Bros. went through behind the scenes throughout their 24 years in videogames. Not everything was a Mario Party back then. Told in Luigi's point-of-view.
1. Default Chapter

Disclaimer:I don't own anything that has to do with Super Mario Bros. or any other characters from the Nintendo company. It's Nintendo's copyrights.

The Darkside

Chapter I: 1979-1981: The Beginning

You may think you know Mario as this happy-go-lucky guy, but that's now. He was a whole new story over 24 years ago, just starting out in the world of The Mushroom Kingdom. Back in the day, my brother came across more trouble than any regular tough guy off the streets could ever be in. He wasn't the friendly, goofy and considerate person he is today. He used to be a misunderstood, short-fused, irritable son of a bitch who was a bully to me brother-wise. It took years and years of growing up for him to realize that he was more than a video game icon. It also took a lot of hard-learned lessons he came across with his dealings with people out in the open world. Also, I've had my share of bumps and bruises as well. I've experienced jealousy towards my brother as well as envy from other people around us. I've been often abused in this line of work in Nintendo, and it took a while for me to put my foot down. This is the darkside of the games that may seem "fun" to all of our fans. First, we'll start with Mario's woes as I saw it.

Flashback to September 1978, Miyamoto High School. Mario was a 20 year old senior to my 17 year old sophomore. He took up carpenter training at his career training center and decided that that would be his job for life. He was also stubborn and didn't like the word "no" at all. One day, April 20th of 1979 to be precise, I helped him get his future together in a whole month prior to his graduation. He seemed relaxed most of the time I've helped him plan, until I told him that he couldn't possibly spend his whole life being a carpenter. When I told him that, his laid-back mood got obliterated and in came his tempestuous side. He may have stood at least 4'11" to my 5'9" and mostly talked in falsetto, but I'm telling you, with my brother appearance don't mean shit. He'll show you what you see isn't exactly what you get. He was a very intimidating person, despite his diminutive figure. He flipped over a table in a fit of rage and flipped out on me, saying, "You don't rule me, little brother! I'm a grown-ass man and I can handle any fuckin' situations y'all throw at me!"

When I restrained him from throwing our mother's $1,000 vase, he turned around and threw it at me. Many sharp pieces pierced my flesh, and I was on the floor, gushing with blood in excruciating pain. Before he left the room to cool down, he kicked me hard in my back while talking more stuff about me. I knew he had a temper back then, but the least he would do would scream at you and maybe even smack you around a little. What I didn't know about him that made him go off on me like that was that people started putting pressure on him about what to do when he's suddenly thrusted off into the real world. He was becoming so cocky about his future that he actually thought that he'd be rich in a mansion 5 years later. Big fucking deal, I thought. Afterwards, I tried so hard to keep our mom from finding out about Mario's fiasco with me, because he'd probably come back and kill me literally if he got kicked out of our house with no remorse by our mom. After he left, I called the paramedics and they came to my house. Our mom wasn't in by that time, so I got off lucky at that time, or so I thought I did. I forgot about that big puddle of blood in the living room where Mario and I was at, when we were planning. I thought to myself, "Either way, you're screwed. How can you forget about all that blood in that room and not clean it up if you didn't want your mom to find out?"

She did find out. The minute she stepped into the living room, all she noticed right away was my blood on her rug. Obviously, one train of thought went through her mind over and over again...that one of us was hurt. She checked at my hospital to make sure everything was alright, and I was forced to spill the beans about Mario's latest explosion and the pain he inflicted upon me. On April 23rd, that was that. Mario officially got the boot, and it didn't have anything to do with living out on his own either. The last time she ever saw Mario again was graduation on May 20th. She was still seething mad at him for what he did to me, and it showed. Normally, your parents are supposed to be openly proud of you when you reach that point of your life. But our mom was an exception. While at the ceremony, she displayed a seemily emotionless face and was cold hearted towards Mario to the point that she wouldn't even tell him how proud she is to see him graduate or act like it, even though deep inside she did in fact feel proud. When he rushed to our mom and hugged her, saying, "I did it! I got my diploma! Our family will be set for life!", she pushed him off of her.

She said coldly, "I can clearly see that giant rolled up joint you possess in your hands that you call a diploma. I still want you to finish packing so that you can get the hell out of our place so that you can go off to a shelter. You'll be staying in one until you can find a permanate place to stay!".

Mario was feeling crushed and betrayed. He thought our mom could keep on tolerating his antics, but now, enough was enough. She has put her foot down and did not plan on raising it back up for nothing or no one. Then I saw Mario do something I've never seen him do in any of my life; he teared up.

He started crying softly, and then walked out of the ceremony back home to finish packing. Mom was still emotionless and didn't seem to care about Mario because of his tough guy image. One time, at age 15, he got so mad at our mom for cutting allowances that he blackmailed her with our abusive dad who would regularly beat her and then side with Mario to practically jump me whenever he would visit every other weekend. Mario was our dad's favorite between him and I. In fact, our dad is where Mario got his bad temper from. I saw what was coming next, so I sped right to our house to try to calm him down.

"It's nothing", I told him. "She doesn't mean it. She really loves you."

Mario yet again let his emotions get the best of him.

He took his suitcase and swung it at me, barely hitting me in the face, and then lunged out to attack me, screaming, "It's all your fault! You're always the good one in the family while they look at me like a thug!"

He took a couple swings at me, and then tried to choke me, when out of nowhere, our mom came out! Enraged herself, she immediately lifted my brother off of me, and pushed him out the door, locking it so that he couldn't come in. She took all the other things he didn't pack from his room and threw them out of his window upstairs. She even tried to take a couple shots at Mario's head with some heavy objects.

"Stay the fuck away from this family, Mario Segali Mario!", she bellowed from his upstairs' window.

From that point on, he was never heard from again. In fact, I never heard from him for over 8 months after that incident.

Sometime in March 1980, Mario got his first job as a carpenter, after many months of searching. He still had that hate in himself at me for ratting him out. His $6.25 an hour payment at his 10 hour a day job wasn't even enough to satisfy him. He was always finding new ways to get money on the side, even if it meant resorting to street hustling to fulfill his ever-growing greed for cash. A year later, he got caught not only selling weed on the corner, but also smoking it during break with some of his co-workers. His supervisor fired him, and that was it for his carpenter career. He didn't even bother getting a legit job after that, because all of the people he went to for jobs knew of his reputation for being a hot-headed asshole to customers, not to mention a drug possession charge on his records. He kept his drug selling business and got into another illegal venture; street fighting. He wound up being 1981's streetfighter of the year in his organization, he was so good. He mainly learned all the breakdance moves we learned together from some of his b-boy friends on the streets and turned them into stylistic capoiera moves mixed with his own gritty style of streetfighting. He battled with many people in a pit that they regularly fight in at night, and usually won.

I caught him while walking home from my job beating the shit out of some unfortunate victim over and over and over. I thought to myself, _Is this my brother doing that? _When he left with a large wad of cash in his hand, I stopped him, and questioned him about his choices he made.

"Why did you decide to take up streetfighting? Why are you using your breakdancing moves we learned together as weapons of mass destruction instead of an artform? Why must you make money off of beating the living daylights out of..."

My last question was interrupted by a sharp smack of the back of his hand. He gave me a little taste of his streetfighting expertise and backhand slapped, or as they now call it "bitch-slapped" me so hard, that I fell to the ground hard. He bellowed in a voice that seemed to make him sound like he was 2 feet taller than his 4'11" frame, "Shut up! Don't you have any idea who I am now? I'm finally making a name for myself with my breakdance skills. I don't care about the artform, so fuck this newfound hip-hop culture, and FUCK YOU!"

Being a fan of the then newly discovered hip-hop scene, the both of us as a matter of fact, I was deeply offended, and thought that he was using a part of hip hop culture as a way of getting money, kind of how today's hip hop culture gets horribly exploited in the world of gangsta-ism all in the name of money. By doing that, he went too far. I decided to fight back, and I punched him dead in his gut. I punched him so hard, that after hunching over for at least 16 seconds, he started to vomit violently. It was such a horrific scene. All of my hidden rage got the best of me.

Before leaving him kneeling over still holding his stomach, I said to him, "You may be the toughest motherfucker on the streets, but no matter what, you ain't shit. You weren't shit back when you graduated, you still ain't shit now, and you'll never be shit for the rest of your life. Remember that, you little punk."

He must've remembered those words that night, because afterwards he tried so hard to get his life in check, but without more drama.

A few months later, May to be exact, he checked into an anger management program so that he could try to get his life together. While attending, he met a girl named Pauline. She was probably no older than 21 and they've had the hots for each other for the longest. Every since Mario built up the nerves to ask Pauline to be his girlfriend and she accepted, he was mellow and a lot more easygoing. He would still get a little irritable here and there, but he was still a lot more calmer. Meanwhile, I was still beefing with my brother for all of the bullshit he put me through in my life. So one day, he came to visit me in my apartment and brought Pauline along.

I immediately tried to throw them both out, screaming out, "SCREW YOU, MARIO! And the hell with your stupid skeezer, too!"

Mario, who would've normally tried to rip my limbs apart for saying something like that, pulled me over to a private corner and calmly said, "Look, little bro'. I understand you're still upset at me for all the things I put you through. But I've finally found my focus. I am trying really hard, and I need your support. Please, Luigi. I'm going to try to patch things up with mom and everything will be fine." He put his hand on my shoulder and then said, "Let's be a family again".

Felling totally untrustful towards him, I brushed his hand off my shoulder and then shoved him hard into a wall, knocking him down hard.

"Family?", I snapped, "You wanna talk about being a fucking family again! Don't you realize what you've put us through? Now, after all that grief, you wanna talk about being a family again? Get out of my apartment!"

Pauline stepped in and punched me in the face, saying, "How dare you try to harm my boyfriend! You're fucking with a psychopath, you know that!"

Now I'm flaming mad, and so I retort back, "Well, I'm no different from a psychopath, so messing with you must be up my alley! Your 'boy' happens to be my big brother, and I'll mess him up if I want to! It's none of your concern! So back off!"

After my tirade, she did back off, but not without giving me one of those icy-cold "I know where you live" scowls. "It's all right", said Mario calmly to Pauline, as he picked himself off the ground.

"It's clear that my little brother doesn't want to be bothered with right now. I'll try to talk to him later. Let's just leave. I'll see you later, little bro'."

I did'nt even say a word. I flipped him and his girl the bird when he said, "See you later". What I've heard afterwards in the hallways made me sick.

She stopped Mario in the hallways and asked him, "Do you let that big bully push you around like that?"

Mario replied, "He had every right to push me like that. I've hurt him as well as my family too many times. Every since I've found you, it seemed like that was the end of my problems. If I lose you, I don't know what I would do."

"Well I wasn't talking about our love, we're talking about your punk-ass brother that pushed you hard into that wall. I love you too, but if him or anybody else ever comes at you like that again, I'll personally dismember every part of their body, because when they disrespect you, they disrespect me as well, ok?"

"Pauline," Mario sighed. "I'm a grown man. I can handle my own business. Let's go before Luigi comes out and hurt the both of us. He probably heard every word we said now."

It's true that I could've came out and stomped the both of them to the ground, but I chose to take my anger out on the wall instead. I punched a big hole in it, and then left to my room to finish writing lyrics. I had aspirations of being a rapper, in which people doubted my skills because they felt it did'nt fit me well. Instead of rhyming about fun stuff like all of the rappers were doing back in the day, I was writing angry rhymes, and nothing but them. They say Ice T and NWA were the first to break out of the party move to introduce the angrier side of rap music that you hear now, but whoever said that, they were wrong compared to what I had written.

A couple of months passed, and I never saw Mario or Pauline in a while. I had wondered what they were up to. December 16th of 1981 was the most memorable date in my mind, because it was the day that this big-ass gorilla by the name of Donkey Kong broke loose from his zoo and went on a rampage. He was rushing himself inside various houses left and right, and ransacked every last one of them as if he was a one-man SWAT team. After I assumed the coast was clear, and I was suprised he didn't break in my apartment, I took a drive to Mario's shelter to talk things out. By the time I got there, I knew something was wrong right away. My suspicions told me that that big bastard Donkey Kong broke in the shelter! Almost everybody inside of it were either severely injured or dead, and the inside looked like a cyclone hit it. Mario, as well as Pauline, was missing, and so I followed his big footsteps to follow where Donkey Kong could've gone to. 2 hours of searching in my car later, his footsteps finally lead me to a big abandoned construction site.

Donkey Kong had taken Pauline and carried her everywhere he went! There was an unfinished tower about 3 stories up that he climbed up with Pauline, and Mario was trying to climb up there to save her. I wanted to help him, but then I decided to leave him be and let him handle it himself. He had finally made it up there with Donkey Kong, and I thought that overgrown gorilla would give Pauline back. It certainly seemed like it, since he brought Pauline off of his shoulder and into Mario's arms. But then it was obvious that he was playing around. He then turned Pauline away from Mario and threw her off the 3 story high platform! And then, leaped off of it and ran back into town to terrorize some more. Mario rushed over to Pauline, who did not move a muscle after falling from the platform, and held her close to him. Over and over again, Mario kept pleading her to "Hold on. Don't leave me. Don't do this to me. Please..." He even tried to shake her hard, but the worst had happened. Pauline was dead. Witnessing this, I felt a sickness in my stomach, and I went to Mario to try to comfort him.

"She's dead...", cried Mario with his voice breaking. "She's gone!"

I touched his shoulder as he wept, and then he turned around and hugged me.

"I'm so sorry", he sobbed loudly, "I'm so sorry! I'll change! I swear I will!"

I said, "Save it. Don't do all of that. You've been through enough. We're family. Do you hear me? We're flesh and blood, and we stick together, even if we're bitter towards each other."

Coming next: Chapter II: Late 1981-1983: The New Deal


	2. Chapter II

Chapter II: Late 1981-1983: The New Deal

(Author's note: The release date of Donkey KongI put in the story is most likely off. I don't know what month it came out in, all I know is that it came out in 1981)

Pauline's death was an eye-opening experience for Mario that had his guilt level brought up high. That's why he was apologizing to me so much after what happened. It made him want to try even harder than he already did to change his ways, and in good timing too. On December 20th, a young videogame creator from Nintendo Of America, out of last-minute pressure, chose to make a game based on Mario's tragedy, which actually made news all across Brooklyn. He came to our house one day to propose the idea to us (mainly Mario), and Mario was initially hesitant. I, on the other hand, already made up my mind. _Fuck this punk. Kick him out_, I thought, _he's only using your tragedy for profits. _I was really angry that he wanted to pitch a game about Pauline's incident.

"I dunno", said Mario softly, "I'll think about it."

With that, Miyamoto gave Mario until the next day to come up with a decision. I told Mario, "What do you think you're doing!"

"What?", Mario asked, almost innocently. "I just told him that I'd think about it."

"Well, I hope you don't do it", I said, "I think it would be a disgrace to base a game off of your own trauma!"

"If I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times already", replied Mario, a little annoyed. "I'm a grown-ass man and I can handle my own buisiness. Besides, I need to get paid the clean way and leave this hustling behind."

That was it. I just backed off and let him call the shots. The next day, Mario called up Nintendo Of America and gave them the green light to turn his sad experience into a videogame. I thought to myself, _what a sellout_. I remembered how he used to say how much he loved and cared for her all the time. I felt that if he really loved and cared about her, even after her death, he would'nt let the game creator go through with this. Before he let Nintendo do this, he set one condition, that the "Pauline character" does'nt die at the end. After the phone call, he ran to me saying, "It's all set. They want to schedule it for December 23rd and get it done as quickly as possible. I'll be getting $2500 for my involvement in the game, and you can be in it too, if you want. Whad'dya say, li'l bro?"

I scowled and yelled, "Fuck that game! I don't want no part of this crap! You do a game about a deceased female you cared about? That's disrespect! I truly think you never loved that girl. You did'nt even shed a tear for her at her funeral, man!"

"I was just trying to be strong for her", replied Mario, "She would've wanted that in me, being the kind of person she was."

"Oh, bullshit!", I blurted out, "That's a lie! I don't think you've changed all that much."

I just walked away from him back into my room in a rage. As I left, Mario shot a look at me like, "What the hell is his problem?"

It was all scheduled. We had to fly out to Los Angeles to get this bullshit game done. It may seem like I'm hating on Mario and I'm making it seem like I was the angel in the end, but everything but trying to be "the good one" was true. It took 3 days to complete it. The game was put out on December 26th, and it wound up being a hit. Mario took home some hefty cash for it, and this is how "Mario Mania" got off to a good start. I was already annoyed enough by him being successful off of his girlfriend's death, but what really pissed me off is when he started getting cocky about it the year after.

It's March 1982 and Mario has been called to a meeting by Nintendo Of America to discuss a possibility of having his very own title. He invited me to this meeting too. I did'nt really want to go, because I was still sour about his last decision, but I went anyways. Word was, they wanted me to be in on this as well. The employees at Nintendo Of America treated Mario like the Mecca of videogames and did whatever he told them to do. Mario started getting special priveliges such as his patented "One Minute Of Gloating" session where Mario would use me and my rapping skills and make me rap and singabout how good his dumb Donkey Kong game was for a whole fucking minute to him and the employees before every meeting. Even the head honcho at Nintendo Of America was in on all the ass-kissing going on! But anyways, on with the meeting. As I said previously, Mario was offered his own title, and he agreed, but with one condition that I get in the game too.

"I'm trying to stay close to my brother", said Mario of adding me in the game, "and this is one way I can strengthen things up between him and I. We've had some hard times together, and anything I do, I want my brother right there backing me up."

Nintendo agreed, and that's how our first true title, Mario Bros., started. Mario started bragging during the meeting, "Man, the arcade industry is booming right now. If you thought Donkey Kong sold well, think of how this would be and I'm in it! You should put in the game info that I was the 'jumpman' character in Donkey Kong. I don't want anybody to forget who I am."

"OK, we'll do it", said the Nintendo boss.

My jaw dropped to the ground like a cartoon character. I thought, _is the boss to this company on crack or something? Aren't you going to get Mario to be more humble about his sucess?_ I had an idea that could help what I was really trying to be for my future.

"Hey, I got an idea", I blurted out to the boss. "On the commercials, how about we get diverse and have me rap about the game? I was just thinking, because of how big rap is getting today, we can touch bases with all sorts of people. What do you think of that?"

The boss gave me a look like he was offended about what I said, and it seemed like he was. He replied, "I think it's garbage. Pure garbage. If we put songs about the game on the commercials, it will be anything but rap music. Besides, that doesn't fit with you guys' image anyway. C'mon, you 2 don't wear big rope gold chains and stand in B-Boy stances, and you 2 don't have bad grammar when you talk. What you're suggesting is an idea that's going to ruin this game before it even starts, so it is out of the question."

Disgusted, I looked at Mario, pleading, "Mario, talk to this guy!" He did'nt even back me up. Instead of supporting me like I was doing for him to do this game together, he said, "He's right, man. We don't want to lose any money on this deal. We did grow up with rap music, but maybe the world won't be ready for a bunch of rapping plumbers. It would look stupid anyways."

Desperately, I tried one last time to mix our game with rap culture and asked if we could at least breakdance in the commercials, and the boss gave me a strong, "HELL NO!" Well, hey. This was 1982 and rap music was'nt as mainstream as it is now. After that, I still agreed to do the game, but I did'nt want to hear shit else from the boss, but with good reason (and no, not because of the whole rap thing either). During the last meetings before we started working on the game in July, he would turn down most of my suggestions for the game and then agree with Mario with almost all of his. And my suggestions did'nt even have anything to do with rap! It seemed like anybody who was'nt rolling with Nintendo big time were nobodies in their eyes, because I never done a game with them. They saw Mario's success in 1981 with Donkey Kong and see more money symbols in their eyes with the possibility of his own title. Maybe that's why everyone treated him like he was "his highness", because they felt that he could rake in more cash for them and make them the #1 gaming company in the whole world. But whatever it was, it was messing with Mario in a major way. Even though he was trying real hard not to hurt me again, he did grow increasingly cockier and cockier by the months.

The game was planned for an October 1982 release, but one thing kept Mario from following up on his release; he started getting increasingly fat, and according to his doctor, was in danger of heart attack due to hypertension. Success started getting to Mario by August while making Mario Bros. and he started growing increasingly depressed. We tried to help him, but he would'nt tell us why he was always sad. He started keeping to himself a lot and has even lost sleep over it. He got to a point to where he would have recurring dreams in his sleep about Pauline dying and him making money off of her misfortune. The guilt had finally set in after all these months for making money off of her. He often wanted to be alone, and had even ordered the staff to stop treating him like royalty in their offices. His depression often linked to eating as a way to get his mind off of Pauline as well as all the friction he caused between our family years back. Eventually, in the middle of August, he just refused to work altogether. And because of this, the rescheduled December 19th release date was yet again pushed back to an April 1983 release.

The boss was growing impatient with Mario, and one day finally put his foot down. In one tense meeting, he told Mario, "I'm sick and tired of your moping. You should be happy, you're on your way to being rich! I know sucess has gotten to you, but you gotta snap out of this before you cause us to can this game for good. If we have to push the release date back one more time, we might just terminate this deal because of your insubordinate behavior. Let's get one thing straight: I am tired of you playing around! You're getting so bad, that if I had to kick you in your nuts to get you to work that I would. Stop playing around and let's finish this game! Do you understand me?"

What the boss said set Mario off, and he went back to being the hot-head he used to be. He pounded his fists on the table, rose out of his chair and bellowed, "I FUCKING MADE Y'ALL! I made you motherfuckers, and you have the audacity to speak to _me_ like that? Y'all were'nt SHIT when you started out in the 70's with y'all wack-ass games. Y'all were'nt SHIT in 1980 with that stupid Popeye game y'all came out with. And without me, you'd probably would've been the worst company in the videogame industry now. I made y'all sorry-ass nobodies...remember that! TELL EVERYBODY!"

After his little temper tantrum, he punched the wall and knocked a potted plant off of a secretary's desk and left. I rushed out of the boss' office to try to calm Mario down. As I reached him at the hallways on his way out the door, I saw he was starting to hunch over, cluching his side. He went from breathing heavily to wheezing for air, and then he collapsed on the ground. His last rage got to his heart from all the hypertension he was suffering, and I called in for an ambulance to come pick him up.

When his doctor came back with his report of my brother's condition, he told me he is suffering from depression associated with an eating disorder. Mario had to go back to anger management to calm himself down as well as take anti-depressants prescribed by his doctor. Not only that, but he had to take some more medicine to help his high blood pressure problem. The doctor also asked me to do one thing I knew I would'nt be able to get away with; put him on a strict diet. I tried my best the morning after the "blowup", but without success. In our new apartment, he made some pancakes for himself before going into another Nintendo meeting about his attitude. Breakfast may be the most important time of the day, but it is certainly the worst time to piss off Mario in a day. When he finished cooking, he reached over for the butter after I was using it for my pancakes, but I snatched it away from him swiftly saying, "Remember what your doctor said, no more fatty foods for at least a month, and that goes for butter."

He grabbed my hand and twisted my wrist hard until I let go of the tub of butter spread. Then as I tried to take it away from him again, he smacked my hand with a butter knife, and luckly it was just that type of knife, because he would've cut me over some stupid condiment. My last attempt in taking the tub of butter from him, I shouldnt've even wasted my time trying. He twisted my wrist again as I reached out, and then taunted me by dipping into the tub of butter with his middle finger and then eating it all off while flipping me off. I had enough of his attitude and I lost it. I smacked the butter off of the table and then gave him a chokehold. He was struggling for a while, and then gave up saying, "OK, you got me, you got me! Let me go now! I'm done fucking with you! Let me go before you kill me!"

I pushed him away from me, saying, "Killing you was something I should've done a long time ago, motherfucker." Mario looked at me funny for a minute, and then started laughing.

"Don't push me, bro", I warned him, lava hot with anger, "I'll beat your ass if you don't stop messing with me."

Mario mocked me, but I guess he did'nt know that I was'nt playing around. I was as serious as his heart attack he suffered a day earlier. To show him I meant business, I kicked him hard on his side and then grabbed Mario by his shirt. My object was not to actually whup his ass, but to show him that I was serious and to shake him up a little. I was done reasoning with words, so I had to physically threaten him in order to keep him in line.

"Relax, man. I was just...", Mario said calmly before I cut him off.

"Shut your mouth", I interrupted, "You always think that people are playing with you! You find everything funny and never take things seriously. I am done playing peacemaker for you, so if you get your act together and stop playing games with me, so help me god, I will beat your ass until you've lost enough blood to fill a blood bank! Do you hear me!"

After my tirade, he straightened up and apologized, finishing his breakfast quickly so that he would'nt be late for the meeting. He did'nt say anything else after my very own explosion. There was just an awkward silence between the 2 of us that he started getting uncomfortable with. He'd start asking me questions and I'd start answering them shortly, as if I wasn't interested in what he had to say. He cleaned up and then rushed out of the door.

Months has passed and Mario managed to lose some weight and do a little better with his blood pressure, but unfortunately, his attitude stayed the same. In meetings, we'd have brainstorming sessions and most of my ideas still get turned down as Mario's are more excepted. Every time my idea got turned down, Mario would act his shoe size instead of his age and point at me, screaming out "HA-HAAAA!". If that was'nt enough to keep himself amused, he would quietly snicker to himself, trying to hold in his laughter every time the boss gave me some not-so-constructive criticism for my ideas of our game, after the boss would tell Mario to keep his mouth shut, of course. He was as tired of his juvenile drivel as I was. Mario was just as childish as he could be from every aspect of business. He'd play with a couple of GI-Joe action figures during meetings sometimes as if he was telling the boss that he could be doing something more important than the meeting, or even pull pranks on me when I least expect it. He once put a sign on my back saying "Please Smack The Shit Out Of Me Because I Am Bad At Brainstorming".

Everybody working at Nintendo would either smack me upside the head or bitch-slap me to the ground when I was'nt looking and then break out into hysterical laughter. Meanwhile, my quest for the rap world was'nt going so great. I honestly had no desire to be in videogames, although years later I started getting into it. I sent my demo to various record companies, and none of them wanted to take a chance on me, because of what I rapped about. I rapped for my friends one day, and they all looked at me like I was on drugs.

They were going, "Man, you're wack. You can't MC like a lot of these young cats these days!All you rap about is breaking people's neck and then digging up graves for them, which your fake-ass probably don't even do. You're garbage. If clubs played your music, you'd ruin the party atmosphere and then start a big riot. Now get out of our faces before we jump your sorry ass."

I lost my cool-points with those people because of my angry music, not to mention I never got my record deal. So, I decided to call it quits for my rap dream and concentrate more on making the Mario Bros. game. Don't get it twisted, though; I was still breakdancing on my free time with my boys and listening to my local radio station for the latest tracks. It was finally April of 1983, and the game dropped on the 15th. Not only were the arcade version doing very well, but the home console sale of the game went through the roof! It was one of the #1 selling games of 1983.

There was one particular thing about promoting this game Mario did'nt like at all; the commercial of this game did'nt have us in it! We wanted to be in the commercial, but the boss declined that, and instead, took 2 no-named, overweight actors that did'nt even look a thing like us, and had them singing a corny-ass song about the game. I did'nt like it either, but I did'nt make a big deal out of it. When the screening of the commercial in our office took place, Mario tried to make an effort to not attend, but was eventually forced to anyways.When one of those dudes on the screen that was supposedly me said, "Mario, where are you!", Mario jumped up and then angrily switched off the TV. The boss said, "What did you do that for?"

He snapped back, "You ruined the most important kind of promotion with that commercial! Why did you hire those 2 fat stuttering fucks instead of Luigi and I?"

"Look, we already discussed this yesterday", replied the boss, "that you 2 only belong in the game. We don't want to blow you up so big that you make your own appearance in anything but your games just yet. Wait a few years, and then we'll get big enough to get to that level! I don't think you 2 are ready for that level yet, especially you, Mario."

"Why are you singling me out?", yelped Mario.

"Your maturity is'nt good enough to handle top-level superstar status, Mario!", the boss shot back. "If you want to be an instant celebrity, you have to show more humiliation and own up to your responsibilities!"

Once again, the boss struck a nerve on Mario, as Mario stormed out of the office, shouting out, "Fuck Nintendo! I'm going to Electronic Arts, you bitches!", and slammed the door hard. It turns out that Mario's threat to quit Nintendo and be Electronic Arts' mascot instead was true. It was being finalized in late August after some long months of negotiating, and I had to try to keep him from going to them.

Coming next: Chapter III: Late 1983-1984: The Market Crash


End file.
